Printing An Effect To Its Own Tape Track

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Mark
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Printing An Effect To Its Own Tape Track

Post by Mark » Thu May 02, 2019 4:40 am

Let's say I want to use my Zoom 1201 (yeah, I'm old school) to add a plate reverb to snare and room to the overall kit. Since I only have the one 1201 I obviously can't do both at once. But what I can do is to print the snare (or the overhead, does it really matter?) reverb to a separate track on my 388 and then combine the dry and wet tracks on a bounce (I'll be bouncing the drum tracks down to a single mono track because mono drums are awesome). Are there any pitfalls or snafus I should look out for when doing this?

Of course, I could print the reverb straight onto the snare/overhead track, but then I'll be stuck with it before the bounce. My plan is to do a rough mix through the main monitor section so I can hear how the drums with reverb sound with vocals added.
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Re: Printing An Effect To Its Own Tape Track

Post by I'm Painting Again » Thu May 02, 2019 6:17 am

I definitely like the reverb on a different track - I think you're right for wanting that

I like to not use any of the regular drum mics for the reverb and use a separate one that's micing the closest wall to the drums and run that through the reverb 100% wet - or more often I don't use a reverb at all - I'll put a 100% wet 20-80 ms simple delay - that gives me a realistic but bigger version of the actual space and that's most of the time more to my liking

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Re: Printing An Effect To Its Own Tape Track

Post by Mark » Thu May 02, 2019 8:56 am

Would I need to use a separate mic on the snare for the reverb or could use the aux/effects send to channel the snare signal to the 1201 and then bring it back into the mixer on another channel bussed to a second track?

Picture it like this

Track 1 is a guide vocal
Track 2 is snare mic
Track 3 is kick mic
Track 4 is overhead mic
Track 5 is snare reverb
Track 6 is rhythm guitar
Track 7 is bass


Then tracks 2 to 5 get bounced to track 8 with a longer room reverb/delay added to the overhead track
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Re: Printing An Effect To Its Own Tape Track

Post by I'm Painting Again » Thu May 02, 2019 1:50 pm

that's how most people do it - just buss to another track

one thing I've learned is that what people say does not always correlate with what sounds the best to me

I try every option and see what I like the best

the verb on another track no matter how you do it is objectively more versitile in that you can EQ it without altering the solid base sound

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Re: Printing An Effect To Its Own Tape Track

Post by Mark » Thu May 02, 2019 3:10 pm

Thanks for confirming that my crazy idea is the right crazy idea. Now I just need to find someone to play the kit that's in my closet (preferably someone with a snare, kick beater pedal, hats and cymbals).

Now... Would you use an enhancer/exciter on the bounce? Even if that enhancer/exciter was a Behringer...
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Re: Printing An Effect To Its Own Tape Track

Post by I'm Painting Again » Thu May 02, 2019 5:03 pm

with a 388 hells yea..I'd likely use a Behringer exciter to combat the dullness of the format and get a thicker tone - I guess just watch out for it being too harsh of a setting and figure out a way to compare it where the A/B volumes are equal so you don't get tricked into "louder is better"

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Re: Printing An Effect To Its Own Tape Track

Post by Mark » Sat May 04, 2019 9:07 pm

I wish I had a Like button. But until then...

:D :^:
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Re: Printing An Effect To Its Own Tape Track

Post by losthighway » Sun May 05, 2019 1:24 pm

Good advice here. I always like a separate reverb track for anything, vocals, drums, acoustic instruments etc. The main reason is I find in the mix process the thing that often gets adjusted the most times and right up to the final mix is the reverb. It's nice to be able to change your mind a couple db on the reverb level, or wet/dry ratio at any point in the process. As indicated above for a few reasons, especially phase, you want to print a 100% wet signal of the reverb. Otherwise the dry part of your ratio might be coming out milliseconds behind your original signal and doing weird phasey stuff.

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Re: Printing An Effect To Its Own Tape Track

Post by cgarges » Wed Jun 19, 2019 8:12 am

I do this a lot, especially with vocals. The only time it's an issue is when I wind up doing something weird to the original track in the mix where the printed reverb then sounds REALLY different from the source. Otherwise, it works like a charm. But IF you had the separate source tracks, you could totally do this at mixdown and keep using your Zoom as many times as you want. Just watch out for phase issues caused by latency, but that shouldn't be much of a problem with something like a totally wet reverb return.

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Re: Printing An Effect To Its Own Tape Track

Post by drumsound » Wed Jun 19, 2019 8:45 am

This is something I've done a ton of times. More often its with a slightly weird thing that I think I'm not going to get back when it comes to mix time. Print the effect to another track and then its always there.

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